Noblesse Oblige: An Enquiry Into the Identifiable Characteristics of the English Aristocracy (1956) is a book illustrated by Osbert Lancaster, caricaturist of English manners, and published by Hamish Hamilton. The anthology comprises four brief essays by Nancy Mitford, Alan S. C. Ross, "Strix" and Christopher Sykes, a letter by Evelyn Waugh, and a poem by John Betjeman. Until Nancy Mitford wrote "The English Aristocracy" in an article published in 1955, England was blissfully unconscious of 'U' ('Upperclass') usage. Her article sparked off a public debate, whose counterblasts are collected in this book, published one year later. Although the subtitle rather dryly suggests it as an enquiry into the identifying characteristics of members of the English upper-class, it is really more of a debate, with each essayist entertaining and convincing. Mitford was credited incorrectly as the editor of the book, though she was merely one of its contributors. The book included essays from contributors like Nancy Mitford, Evelyn Waugh, and John Betjeman, who humorously dissected upper-class habits and language.
Overview This collection of essays started with Nancy Mitford's article "The English Aristocracy", published in 1955 in the magazine Encounter in response to a serious academic article by the British linguist Alan S. C. Ross (below). The expressions 'U' (upper class) and 'non-U' (non-upper class) came to prominence in this article, which sold out the edition of the magazine immediately after publication. The article caused a great deal of light-hearted controversy. The book was published one year later. There is sharp disagreement among the Us who have contributed to this book. Considered one of the most gifted comic writers of her time, Mitford, who had had an aristocratic upbringing along with her sisters, said she wrote the article about her peers "In order to demonstrate the upper middle class does not merge imperceptibly into the middle class". She said differences of speech distinguish the members of one social class in England from another. The daughter of a Baron, she was therefore an "Hon" − honourable. Deborah Cavendish, the Duchess of Devonshire, the youngest of the famously (and sometimes infamously) unconventional Mitford sisters, wrote a letter to Encounter about the article saying: "... as the co-founder, with my sister Jessica, of the Hons Club, I would like to point out that ... the word Hon meant Hen in Honnish... We were very fond of chickens and on the whole preferred their company to that of human beings ...".
Reviews Noblesse Oblige was reviewed favorably by Time magazine in May 1956:
In these days of penurious peers and vanishing stately homes, how can one tell whether an Englishman is a genuine member of the Upper Class? Last week, in a slim anthology of aristocratic manners edited by aristocratic Novelist Nancy Mitford (Noblesse Oblige; Hamish Hamilton), England got an answer that has managed to stir up everyone from Novelist Graham Greene to Actor John Loder. Not since Humorist Stephen Potter launched the cult of gamesmanship had the nation been so obsessed as it was over the difference between U (Upper Class) and non-U. Two decades later, upon Mitford's death, the New York Times obituary had this to say about the book:
Unabashedly snobbish and devastatingly witty, Miss Mitford achieved enormous success and popularity as one of Britain's most piercing observers of social manners... Indeed, one of Miss Mitford's pet concerns entered the history of obscure literary debates when, in 1955, she published perhaps her most famous essay on upper-class and non-upper-class forms of speech. The essay sparked such a controversy in Britain, with responses from many major literary figures, that Miss Mitford was compelled a year later to bring out a thin book, Noblesse Oblige, with her disquisition on the subject as its centerpiece. Her argument, a set-piece even today among literary parlor games, was that the more elegant euphemism used for any word is usually the non-upper-class thing to say—or, in Miss Mitford's words, simply non-U. Thus: It is very non-U to say "dentures"; "false teeth" will do. Ill is non-U; sick is U. The non-U person resides at his home. The U person lives in his house. And so forth.
Contents
"The English Aristocracy" Nancy Mitford writes in the first essay that the English aristocracy is the only real aristocracy left in the world today, even if it may seem to be on the verge of decadence: it has political power through the House of Lords and real social position through the Queen. Then she explains the order of precedence of dukes, marquesses, earls, viscounts, barons, members of a noble family, young sons, baronets, knights and knights of the Garter. Accused of being a snob, she quotes from Alan Ross of Birmingham University who points out that "it is solely by their language that the upper classes nowadays are distinguished since they are neither cleaner, richer, nor better-educated than anybody else". Mitford says Ross invented the U and non-U English useful formula. Though she doesn't agree completely with the Professor's list, she adopts his classification system, and adds a few suggestions of her own. She gives many examples of U and non-U usage and thoroughly explains the aristocracy saying, for example, dukes are rather new creations, the purpose of the aristocrat is most emphatically not to work for money, and nobility in England is based on title and not on bloodline. The ancestors of the lords spent months abroad, buying pictures and statues, which they cheerfully sell in order to spend months abroad, she writes.
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